There are many web authoring tools available, some of them for free (you just download them and read directions). Here, I review a few of them. All of them are decent, but you will have to try a few before you decide which to stick with.

FirstPage 2000 is an excellent tool if you want to get your fingers directly on the HTML code. You will need an HTML book handy also if you use Homesite, though. Or you can locate one of the many, many web sites including mine) to teach you HTML.It requires you to do your work by entering source code. It does have an assortment of buttons to assist you however. Many of the things you want to do can be made interactive this way. However, you will not actually be working on a WYSYWIG (What you see is what you get) screen, so you won't see the results of your work until you select the Browse Tab. If you do not like what you see, you go back to the Edit Tab and change the source code. Another HTNl authoring tool has surfaced recently and is an excellent tool. This is 1stPage2000. It has excellent help and excellent HTML references.

You may want to use a Web Authoring tool such as Microsoft Publisher 98 or  Microsoft Frontpage, Pagemill, or Dreamweaver (to name a few) if you would like to get fancy. If you want to produce less intensively designed pages, Microsoft Word 2000 is also a good tool. However, if you have Word , it may not have been installed with the HTML options available. You can tell by looking at the File/Save As..  options. If Save as WEb Page is not there, then that copy of Word  is not HTML-enabled, so you will need to reinstall it. When installing it, you must select Custom installation. Then among Office Tools, be sure to select Web Authoring.

There are many less expensive alternatives, though. If you go to a store like CompUSA and go to their Internet aisle, you will find a crop of them. The only one that I have seen and NOT liked is Web Construction Kit 4.0. Hot Dog is a popular one on the Macs. I bought and installed Hotmetal Pro 4.0 and I still prefer FirstPage 2000 when I want to deal directly with HTML code. 

Microsoft Front Page 98/2000 is probably the post powerful of the tools I have cited, and if you have never done any HTML source code, it might well have the lowest learning curve. However, if your ISP does not have Front Page Extensions installed, you find it very difficult to upload your files, since MFP places all kinds of things that it uses in a variety of folders. If your ISP has Front Page Extensions, you can simply use MFP and tell it to Publish the page - it will automatically connect and automatically put everything in its proper place. I am in fact using MFP to create this guide.

As you prepare text, whatever you choose, consider the do's and don'ts of document preparation.